


the future is a prison

by Starfire (kalypsobean)



Category: Blade (Movie Series)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 09:52:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalypsobean/pseuds/Starfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>deacon frost lives on in everything she does (or how the nightstalkers got their firepower)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the future is a prison

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SoundandColor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoundandColor/gifts).



She watches him turn to dust; he was small and distant, but now he is as nothing. In a way, so is she.

 

It annoys her because she was nothing to him, and yet, even as she walks away, she can't stop thinking about him, even though there is so much else to focus on; the wind, Blade's silence, what else needs to be done. It's not over for her, perhaps never will be.

 

What really gets to her, as she replays everything in her mind - trying to understand herself more than anything, or so she insists - is that she respects him, for all that he tried to change things, for all that he tried to hurt her. He saw something that he wanted to change and went out and tried to make it happen. Of course, resurrecting a Blood God was probably not ideal, in any case, but still. He took action. And, she asks herself, when it's dark and she's alone and that part of her is at its worst, what has she done? It was her research that Blade used, but she didn't do anything but give him her blood, make it easier for him to win. It isn't her victory at all.

 

She remembers Frost's hands on her, how she thought 'oh' and her mind stuttered, for a moment trapped under his influence, seduced by everything that he was and exuded. It was no wonder to her that he had multiple others, it barely mattered in those few moments before she reasserted herself and remembered what he wanted from her beyond leverage, beyond food.

 

It is something she can't grasp, even as she's left alone, left to pick up the pieces and move on like both everything and nothing had happened at the same time. It is a mystery, how it is that she can go back to work, pleading that she was sick and with a statutory declaration on hand to go with her excuse, so that nobody knows what's really out there, and behave as if she wasn't suddenly part of another world, one more primal and gratifying than the one she lived in. She holds vials of other people's blood in her hand and something whispers inside her that the blood is the life, like something out of a book that she never thought she'd feel drawn to read. She runs to her apartment from the subway because it's dark and she knows what's in the shadows, who could be looking for her.

 

Blade checks on her, but those moments become infrequent, and then she hears he's gone, and suddenly, it's like she's adrift. Perhaps she dreamed it all; after all, there is no proof, nothing to say that it really happened, that she killed someone amid the deaths of tens of others and that vampires are real and that some of them might have a reason to permanently dislike her.

 

She welcomes the dreams, the ones where it turned out differently, because it reminds her that at one point there was more in the world than the meaningless repetition and routine that always used to mean things were good. 

The idea comes to her in one of those dreams, one where he touches her and sees her as more than currency, as someone with worth.

 

She doesn't know how to start until she remembers the old man and the lair; she goes there even though she expects it to be empty. It's as she remembers it, as if nobody had touched it since that night; her research is still there, though it lies haphazardly on the table and across the ground. The formula is there, and she finds the last of her notes conveniently held down by an empty cartridge, like it was left for her to find. She is careful, but she starts to look in the shadows, though it takes her time to find someone who looks like he might talk before asking about dinner. He gives her names (though not his own), numbers, and she makes calls. It's not the same, but she knows this is how things are done - under the table, in back rooms and on deserted roads. Soon she has funding, and even a formal grant to make it look official; she has her own lab and can hire interns, assistants, even bid for outsourcing contracts for extra cash.

It hits her, one day, what she's done; she's turned into someone else, someone who didn't run, who didn't just do the least she needed to. 

 

Under cover, she continues her work; she still dreams, but she tells herself she can't let it stop her, she can't live on a what-if and a slim regret. He never would have let her be, as she was. His touch would have stayed that way, rough and slightly too strong for her fragile human body to handle; he would never have respected her.

He would kill her if he were here to know what she'd done.

 

She sees him sometimes; she's never sure if it's real, but he's there watching as if she hadn't seen him die. He's in the subway and below her window and in the waiting room and in her head, and she doesn't think he'll ever leave her alone. It's his revenge for the way she stood up to him, it's karma and she deserves it, maybe, because she stood up to him and he was all-powerful until he wasn't, because of her.

And not her.

 

The man who helped her comes by the lab when she's working late, by herself; he gets in even though she checked all the doors and has all the lights on. _He's finally come for me_ , she thinks, and she's almost giddy, hysterical, at the thought that her life is a circle and she will never escape, never win, no matter how much she fights back.

But instead it's just him, and he says the old man wants her help, wants her to join his team.

Perhaps she can redeem herself, perhaps her dark side will win.

 

Perhaps there's a hell, and he's waiting for her there.

 

She says yes, because if she can get rid of all of them maybe then she'll be free.

**Author's Note:**

> ** "...the blood is the life" is a reference to Dracula.


End file.
